A deep sea mooring field, planned permanent settlement and tourism-driven sea economy, established west of the Cay Sal Bank, South of the Florida Keys and North of Cuba, at the junction of the Exclusive Economic Zones of multiple nations. This project/settlement would be expandable to suit the volume of interest, would be open to all interest, would maintain a population constituted by any number of people sharing a common interest in utilizing it (even if just any number of private/personal vessels utilizing the mooring field as their place of residence), and the settlement may be implemented with the dropping of a single concrete anchor. Broader implementation could take place quickly through crowdfunding, private investment or whatever private and public resources may be available in the interest of stimulating such an endeavor, and broad general participation.

Proposed Amenities:

— Open-water mooring for any number of vessels of any size, including any number of permanent developments for providing housing and services, as well as to facilitate tourism, commerce, education and research.

— (A) floatel(s), semi-submersible rig(s) or large vessel(s) capable of providing services to visitors, including lodging, food, entertainment, and whatever various venues of services may be agreed upon to offer by the community. Amenities to draw tourist interest would include lodging, food, unlimited mooring, potential charter offerings for sports fishing and/or regular transport to and from coastal settlements, gaming, and whatever other forms of entertainment the community may be able to offer.

— Facilities for offering fuel and fresh water to residents, visitors and vessels in transit through the region. (Large tanks or tenders)

— Planned project development to expand research and implementation of solar, wave-power and orthohydrogen/parahydrogen energy generation in the spirit of making the settlement increasingly more autonomous and less dependent upon the import of outside resources.

— Planned project development for sustainable/self-sustaining above-deck, raised-bed Hegelkultural cultivation of land crops, utilizing dried sargassum and other macroalgae as a topsoil growing medium, and accounting for biodiversity in such a manner as to eventually implement the development of a “floating food forest”.

— A floating boom-and-net area to maintain a surface sargassum culture, as well as to secure by tether any number of suspended submersible/semi-submersible phycological cultivation beds, and to define the boundary of a controlled deep sea fishery.

– Anything else you may think of.

Some may draw the question of a foul weather threat to the equation as being a negative factor in this suggested region, I would suggest that emergency procedures would be the same as for any other at-sea enterprise and/or mooring field in the region, and that all involved parties should maintain their own emergency plans for securing their vessels to the best of their ability and/or evading the storm. The concrete anchor and buoy will weather any storm just fine, and the endeavor will continue after…even the worst of storms would only call for temporary evasion and abandonment. Larger amenities would hopefully be designed of a nature as to assure their ability to seek safe anchorage in nearby coastal regions.

The idea is that it’s freely open to expansion, from the time of it’s conception onward…those amenities are suggestions and ideas for what would offer a lucrative return to investment, but they’re not necessary for people to take up settlement at sea. At the very least, a mooring field along a major shipping lane is a good, sound start on establishing a permanent settlement at sea. Any services offered which were a viable alternative to hefty port fees and routes through national waters would have to be of benefit, and would give good incentive for the world community at large to support the settlement. The fair weather and novel concept of the community design would be lucrative to drawing tourists, and a floatel could be positioned on-site for under or around one million even, give or take variance on the basis of market availability and range to transport it to the site, at the time of purchase.

…or hundreds of feet of chain, dive and supply boats, diesel, food, paying captain(s), mates, divers, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea is solid (if capital is available) and a sport fishing-diving floatel might do good there (moored right is the lagoon, maybe?) The only drawback would be crossing the Gulfstream which can be a bitch at times and also operating a ferry service to do so, which will be a huge overhead.

I suspect the usa gov will give you lots of various troubles because the area is already noted for drug running and refugee traffic. Why not ask Bahamas for permission to build right on the Cay Sal bank? From what i hear of the water flow there, you could drop a series of 6ft turbines overboard and have all the electricity you need. And it’s a rock bottom there, not coral, and ringed by widely spaced rock outcrops (islands).

When you say “I suspect the usa gov will give you lots of various troubles…”, is that just a gut feeling of yours? Where did you hear of “the water flow there”? Or are you talking about the tidal and the Gulfstream current? Why bother with such expensive and inefficient technology like turbine generators when you can have cheap solar panels and wind generators to do the job?

Ocean, i believe i can make a one killowatt water “windmill” cheaper than i can put up a kw of solar or wind generator. Plus the water flow there is unaffected by it being dark half the time. Solar panels work best if you want to stay put or go where you want, but if you can anchor you can put up windmills or watermills. If you cannot anchor, the wind and water will blow you around more than they will make power for you. That’s part of the charm of the Cay Sal, it’s not that deep that if you drop a mill you can retrieve it, it’s not coral so anchoring is permitted, it’s shallow enough that no ocean ships can get to you, and from what i hear it has a strong constant current in places.

But i was running some exciting numbers on a ever so slightly unrelated scheme involving concrete and slipforming and such, and i remember this thread, and Elan saying “or a cement anchor, a buoy and a leaky rowboat”, which implies a one-person seastead, and that person not being there for making trips to land for supplies or to make sales. So i was running numbers thru the calculators, and thought i’d see if this thread with Elan’s solo (and my solo) plan for a seastead somewhere west of the Cay Sal (which sorta includes the Gulf of Mexico), could be woken up again.

Lets say Elan and i find a way to make it possible for us to settle our separate little patches of the ocean, politely sharing the ocean with whoever is traveling thru. He has his buoy and stuff hanging off it, i have whatever i have and stuff floating all around it, and we need to make a trip to land. We cannot be in two places at once, so we must leave all our worldly possessions floating on the high seas, as we go buy toilet paper, ramen noodles, cheap wine, and sunblock, and perhaps sell seaweed or a swordfish or something. If Ocean has his houseboat parked off some lovely island in the Keys, and no one is aboard for 6 hours, he’s got the same problem: his tv and generator is going to disappear.

So what’s to stop anyone from stealing our buoys and radios and and other things while we are away? What’s to stop the USCG from declaring the seastead to be without a pilot, and sink our stuff? I don’t know about Elan’s stuff, but mine won’t work properly at the bottom of the ocean.

Something to definitely consider is charging boats a fee to dock up. This could be a huge source of revenue for the island. It could be a great staging area for deep sea fisherman, and travelers to rest and get supplies, as well as normal vacationers.

Edit: I live in Fort Myers by the way. I have put thought into this exact same location. I am very interested in lending a helping hand however I can.